Cytomic "The Drop" Resonant Filter

[ZenPunkHippy]

I think one of the points people are overlooking is:

The CEO and founder Andrew Simper started out making free VST plug‑ins under the name Vellocet in the late '90s

Source: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov10/a ... e-glue.htm

To put it another way, "Cytomic" or "Vellocet" or just "Andrew Simper the DSP filter guy" has been around for longer than many of the companies people would trust to use CR copy protection.

I don't think he's going away any time soon, and neither are your authorisations.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Andy was Vellocet? Was Angus Hewlett from Fxpansion involved in that too? Maybe even pre-FXP. I thought I remember some kind of tie in or link between the two, but it was so long ago...

[EvilDragon]

ProCo Rat!!!

Never heard a plug that even comes close to that sound and I would love to hear what Drop style circuit modeling could do to get that original Motorola LM308 vibe.

Tried out TSE R47?

[andy-cytomic]

From the video The Drop seems to be the new king of ITB filters. Great work, Andy!

Unfortunately, with the new C/R I won't even demo it, so no purchase from me. I got nothing against C/R coming from big companies like iZotope, NI or Ableton. But from a one-man company it's a completely different story.

I think what mustgroove means is that your statement first says "I have complete faith in your plugin being the most awesome of plugins available bar none!" and then you say "but I won't use it since I don't trust that Cytomic will be around very long", which is a bit paradoxical if you actually look at the logic and the supporting evidence.

I first started writing plugins when the VST SDK v1.0 was released under the name Vellocet around 20 years ago now, which was just when NI started up business, and before iZotope, or Ableton even existed. I have maintained the Vellocet web page with my friend Skot McDonald (now partner of FXpansion) the entire time, even though we only ever released freeware. With paying customers to support you can expect I will maintain the Cytomic web page for way longer than 20 years! But, really, I don't mind, you are free to do as you choose, there are plenty of more trusting people around that will jump on the opportunity of using this and a load more Cytomic plugins just around the corner.

[ZenPunkHippy]

... and a load more Cytomic plugins just around the corner.

So does this mean you now have a reusable framework that allows you to implement new / interesting circuit models + GUIs much faster than the total development time for The Drop?

[andy-cytomic]

Andy was Vellocet? Was Angus Hewlett from Fxpansion involved in that too? Maybe even pre-FXP. I thought I remember some kind of tie in or link between the two, but it was so long ago...

Yes, both Skot McDonald and I are/were "Vellocet", I concentrated mainly on effects which included VReOrder and VFilter. VFilter is still used today by a friends from Perth Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen ( https://twitter.com/rob_swire/status/474234431868506112 )

There was something called a VST plugin ring, which Vellocet joined, which was just a way of sharing links between people writing plugin - there was also dBrown, FXpansion, Muon and a bunch more outfits sharing links. Later on I worked with FXpansion on effects algorithms, and also was the main designer and dsp coder behind Synth Squad. I left FXpansion to start up Cytomic, which was around 5 years ago now and Cytomic is going stronger than ever.

[mustgroove]

VFilter is still used today by a friends from Perth Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen

Whoa, you're from Perth?! That's awesome - all the more proud to be using Cytomic plugins on everything!

[andy-cytomic]

... and a load more Cytomic plugins just around the corner.

So does this mean you now have a reusable framework that allows you to implement new / interesting circuit models + GUIs much faster than the total development time for The Drop?

Indeed! The new framework and tools I have developed for The Drop are all brilliant. It has taken a long time to develop the infrastructure to the point it is now, but it is easy to write loads of new plugins using it.

I have one file which defines the plugin parameters and which actual DSP code they control, another that defines the size and position of the controls and what they look like (eg text label, bitmap string knob etc), and then the dsp itself - which I'll get into in a sec, and everything else is handled by common framework code.

A lot of the time to develop The Drop was because there was a lot of manual solving of circuits using math packages, and then translating that to code - which was error prone and slow to try out new ideas. I decided to "tool up" and wrote my own circuit solver. I specify input voltages / currents, and output voltages / currents, which components (and their values) are in the circuit and how they are connected (so basically a spice netlist) and the linear algebra slog is all done automatically. I hand code fast numerical approximations (eg the a fast exp function), but the rest is completely generated by my circuit solver way better and faster and more parallel and more reliably than I can do by hand, which allows me to concentrate on the more difficult issues in circuit solving rather than get bogged down in boring and error prone linear algebra.

[ZenPunkHippy]

That is very cool, thanks for the explanation.

... really good news for plugin junkies everywhere

[camsr]

Let's say, JUST FOR A WORRISOME EXAMPLE, that Cytomic went the same way Kjaerhus did, disappeared into thin air. This would mean that the plugin would no longer install "legitimately". Nobody wants a repeat of that C/R fiasco. What guarantee can you give, Andy, that above all controllable circumstances (no meteors IOW :facepalm:) users will be able to authorize and install your plugins?

[andy-cytomic]

Let's say, JUST FOR A WORRISOME EXAMPLE, that Cytomic went the same way Kjaerhus did, disappeared into thin air. This would mean that the plugin would no longer install "legitimately". Nobody wants a repeat of that C/R fiasco. What guarantee can you give, Andy, that above all controllable circumstances (no meteors IOW :facepalm:) users will be able to authorize and install your plugins?

I'm a little busy to cover it again right now, please read back through the thread

[zlatan]

Let's say, JUST FOR A WORRISOME EXAMPLE, that Cytomic went the same way Kjaerhus did, disappeared into thin air. This would mean that the plugin would no longer install "legitimately". Nobody wants a repeat of that C/R fiasco. What guarantee can you give, Andy, that above all controllable circumstances (no meteors IOW :facepalm:) users will be able to authorize and install your plugins?

It's just beyond rude to bother the creator of an exceptional piece of audio software with questions like this !

Can you imagine to ask these type of questions about each and every product you spend money on ?


We're talking about $99 here ...not $1.000.000

[andy-cytomic]

Let's say, JUST FOR A WORRISOME EXAMPLE, that Cytomic went the same way Kjaerhus did, disappeared into thin air. This would mean that the plugin would no longer install "legitimately". Nobody wants a repeat of that C/R fiasco. What guarantee can you give, Andy, that above all controllable circumstances (no meteors IOW :facepalm:) users will be able to authorize and install your plugins?

It's just beyond rude to bother the creator of an exceptional piece of audio software with questions like this !

Can you imagine to ask these type of questions about each and every product you spend money on ?


We're talking about $99 here ...not $1.000.000

Now I've covered the backup plan already, so please read my previous posts on that topic, but I did forget to mention one thing, so here it is.

There are a vocal minority that seem overly worried about copy protection when that isn't actually going to be much of a problem, it is very cheap and easy to maintain an authorisation server - trivial in fact, no work, no issues. What you should actually be worried about is compatibility.

The first version I released of The Glue (which was 32-bit only) won't even run in many peoples DAWs right now, but it has no copy protection at all! This is because now operating systems and software are mostly 64-bit, and on Mac even the most basic of APIs to draw to the screen and handle mouse movements etc has completely changed. Updating to 64-bit and supporting new APIs and plugin standards is a lot of work, so if you are going to be worried about anything then you should focus your attention on compatibility issues rather than copy protection, as that will be around 100,000 times more likely to be a problem, but I haven't even heard one peep out of all the C/R critics about this - go figure!

[camsr]

I have trialed the Drop and ran it successfully, and also use Poly-ana and Reaktor, both C/R software.
If you are getting reports on compatibility problems, it's probably not related to C/R as most ALL of your users have probably trialed your plugin already.

In fact C/R is most likely NOT to give compatibility problems. So the people with C/R in mind most likely are not worrying about compatibility

[masterhiggins]

...and a load more Cytomic plugins just around the corner.

Great. There goes my future savings. Lol.

Could you give us some hints to whet our appetites? Perhaps a PPG filter (hint hint)?

-Sam